Retrieving elements that has a tag - XML in Python

Question

From the sample xml below

<?xml version="1.0"?>
    <data>
        <country>
            <name>Liechtenstein</name>
            <rank>1</rank>
            <year>2008</year>
            <gdppc>141100</gdppc>
            <neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/>
            <neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/>
        </country>
        <country>
            <name>Singapore</name>
            <rank>4</rank>
            <year>2011</year>
            <gdppc>59900</gdppc>
            <neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/>
        </country>
        <country>
            <name>Panama</name>
            <rank>68</rank>
            <year>2011</year>
            <gdppc>13600</gdppc>
            <neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/>
            <neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/>
        </country>
    </data>

Using Python ElementTree

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('test.xml')


for elem in tree.iter(tag='name'):
    print (elem.tag)

displays three name elements. How can I retrive just one name element <name>Panama</name> with a specfic text.

for elem in tree.iter(tag="name='panama'"): not working

Bill Bell · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-01 03:48:56Z

2

You could consider using xpath in lxml. Using text() enables you to find 'Panama' as the content of an element quickly. Once you have done that you can navigate to neighbouring information items for the same country.

>>> from lxml import etree
>>> tree = etree.parse('test.xml')
>>> tree.xpath('.//name/text()')
['Liechtenstein', 'Singapore', 'Panama']
>>> for item in tree.xpath('.//name/text()'):
...     if item == 'Panama':
...         for cousins in item.getparent().getparent().getchildren():
...             cousins.text
...             
'Panama'
'68'
'2011'
'13600'

answered May 1, 2017 at 3:48

Bill Bell

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eli-bd · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-01 02:14:16Z

1

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse('test.xml')
countries = tree.findall("country")
for country in countries:
    name = country.find("name")
    if name.text == "Panama":
        print(name.text)

Also, please note that your xml is not well formed. You have an ] instead of an > in line 19 of test.xml

answered May 1, 2017 at 2:14

eli-bd

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